- Virginia man pleads not guilty to charges in DC pipe bomb case
Source: Associated Press
“A Virginia man has pleaded not guilty to charges accusing him of planting two pipe bombs outside the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican national parties on the eve of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Brian J. Cole Jr., of Woodbridge, Virginia, entered the plea at a brief hearing on Friday. He is facing two counts of transporting and attempting to use explosives. Justice Department prosecutors have said that Cole confessed to placing pipe bombs outside the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee headquarters only hours before a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol. Cole said he hoped the explosives would detonate and ‘hoped there would be news about it,’ prosecutors wrote in court documents.” (01/10/26)
https://apnews.com/article/pipe-bomb-capitol-riot-cole-rnc-dnc-7c737b5bf881c01011777c586ed41e12
- Musk says X’s new algorithm will be made open source next week
Source: Engadget
“X may soon provide more insight into how its algorithm works. On Saturday, Elon Musk posted on the platform to say that the company ‘will make the new X algorithm, including all code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users, open source in 7 days.’ X’s recommendation algorithm has been the subject of investigations by France and the European Commission, the latter of which recently extended through 2026 a retention order that it sent to the company at the beginning of last year.” (01/10/26)
- UK: Tories fantasize about social media ban for under-16s
Source: BBC News [UK]
“The Conservatives say they would ban under-16s from accessing social media platforms if they win power, promising to follow the example of Australia, which became the first country to introduce the policy last month. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said her party would also seek to ban smartphones in schools if it entered office. Speaking to the BBC, she said many parents wanted to stop their children using social media but ‘don’t know how.'” [editor’s note: They’re about as likely to successfully repeal the laws of gravity – TLK] (01/11/26)
- Syria: Kurdish-led SDF agrees to evacuate Aleppo after deadly clashes
Source: The New Arab [UK]
“The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said Sunday that they agreed under a ceasefire to withdraw their fighters from the two districts they held in Aleppo after deadly clashes in the city. … The United States and the European Union on Saturday urged the Syrian government and Kurdish authorities to return to negotiations after days of clashes. The violence in Aleppo erupted after efforts to integrate the SDF’s de facto autonomous administration and military into the country’s new government stalled. Since the fighting began on Tuesday, at least 21 civilians have been killed, according to figures from both sides, while Aleppo’s governor said 155,000 people have been displaced.” (01/11/26)
https://www.newarab.com/news/syria-kurdish-led-sdf-agrees-evacuate-aleppo-after-clashes
- Nobel Institute shuts down talk of Machado sharing Peace Prize with senile reality TV star
Source: Fox News
“The organization that oversees the Nobel Peace Prize rejected recent suggestions that Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado could give or share her award with President Donald Trump. The Norwegian Nobel Institute shut down the idea Friday, after Machado suggested that she might transfer the prestigious award to Trump earlier this week. ‘Once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others,’ the institute said in a statement. ‘The decision is final and stands for all time.’ The statement comes after Machado floated the idea during an appearance Tuesday on Fox News'[s] ‘Hannity.'” (01/10/26)
- We’re really doing another year of this?
Source: USA Today
by Rex Huppke“[W]e are less than two weeks into the new year, and what we have seen from a president and a Republican Party ostensibly put in control of the country to lower food prices and improve the lives of hardworking Americans is chaos and death. At his 2025 inauguration, Trump said: ‘Our power will stop all wars and bring a new spirit of unity to a world that has been angry, violent, and totally unpredictable.’ Bandying about like pirates snatching other nations’ oil and gunning down Americans in the streets doesn’t jibe with stopping wars or nurturing a new spirit of unity. … Even if you, for some reason, approve of a federal agent shooting multiple times into a vehicle while recording video on his cell phone, there should at least be some universal agreement that the Trump administration’s response to what happened in Minneapolis has been vile, inflammatory and sickeningly tribal.” (01/11/26)
- Will Trump’s Residential Investment Ban Really Make Housing More Affordable?
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp“When government shoves its nose into markets, the supposed beneficiaries usually end up losing. Politically connected businesses pocket more money. Government bureaucrats enjoy more power. Everyone else pays through the nose. Politicians’ assertions of contrary motivation just add insult to injury.” (01/10/26)
- Mayor Mamdani’s collectivist warmth is a lot like chilly Commie Bucharest
Source: New York Post
by James Bovard“Mayor Mamdani promised New Yorkers Jan. 1 he would ‘replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.’ Luckily, psychiatrists have not yet classified ‘rugged individualism’ as a mental illness. But Mamdani’s vision of cozy collectivism is tricky to reconcile with what I saw in Communist Romania in November 1987. … In Romania, ‘warmth’ was an abstraction that existed primarily in propaganda campaigns exalting the supreme leader, Nicolae Ceaușescu. To save energy to fulfill the Five-Year Plan for factories, the government routinely cut off the electricity to hospitals, causing 1,000 deaths the previous winter. The infant mortality rate was so high, the government refused to register children as being born until they survived their first month. On the streets …. People stopped me and pleaded for packs of Kent cigarettes — the de facto second currency — they could use to bribe doctors to get health care for their sick children.” (01/10/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/01/10/opinion/mamdanis-collectivist-warmth-is-a-lot-like-commmunist-chill/
- Americans Are Sick and Tired of Pointless Wars
Source: The Intercept
by Alain Stephens“From a purely tactical standpoint, the operation was a textbook display of American might: fast, overwhelming, and successful, with U.S. forces in and out of Venezuela before most of the world had even processed what was happening. But almost immediately, that show of force collided with a harder reality at home: Only 1 in 3 Americans say they support it, an unusually low level of approval at the very outset of a U.S. military operation. A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken January 4 to 5 found that just 33 percent approved of the U.S. removing Maduro, while 72 percent reported their concerns about the U.S. getting too involved in Venezuela. Support breaks sharply along party lines, with Republicans backing the operation at far higher rates than Democrats and independents. Historically, Americans have given new conflicts much more leeway. ” (01/10/26)
https://theintercept.com/2026/01/10/venezuela-trump-pointless-wars/
- Nostalgia isn’t strategy: Stop the Monroe revisionism and listen
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Brandan P Buck“‘[T]herefore you may rest assured that if the Nicaraguan activities were brought to light, they would furnish one of the largest scandals in the history of the country.’ Such was the concluding line of a letter from Marine Corps Sergeant Harry Boyle to Idaho Senator William Borah on April 23, 1930. Boyle’s warning was not merely an artifact of a bygone intervention, but a caution against imperial hubris — one newly relevant in the wake of ‘Operation Absolute Resolve’ in Venezuela. The Trump administration has amplified the afterglow of its tactical success with renewed assertions of hemispheric hegemony through a nostalgic and often ahistorical reading of the Monroe Doctrine. Despite the administration’s enthusiasm for old-fashioned hemispheric imperialism, the historical record ought to caution for restraint, not revisionism.” (01/09/26)
- Helping ICE be safer
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff“Over the past year, several cities in the United States have erupted temporarily into war zones. Violence has broken out between immigration agents and those living in the country illegally [sic], or Americans hampering deportations. In recent days, a killing in Minneapolis and shootings in Oregon by federal agents have highlighted the potential for personal tragedy stemming from the Trump administration’s enforcement of immigration laws as well as the street tactics opposing such law enforcement. Agents of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been connected to at least 14 shootings over the past 12 months. At the same time, the mental impact on these federal officers has also risen, perhaps causing many to be too quick to pull the trigger.” [editor’s note: ICE agents are free to give up the thug life and get real jobs if people’s natural reactions to murderous goons makes them feel unsafe – TLK] (01/09/25)
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2026/0109/Helping-ICE-be-safer
- 2016: The Year American Democracy Became “Post-Truth”
Source: JimBovard.com
by James Bovard“Was the 2016 election a turning point for American democracy? Did political shenanigans and the election destroy so much credibility and legitimacy that the system will never fully recover? In 2016, ignorant voters were reviled like never before. However, the entire political-media system floundered badly. Never before had American voters been obliged to choose between two such widely despised candidates. A few months before the election, an Associated Press poll ‘found that 86 percent of Americans were angry or dissatisfied with the state of politics in the nation.’ Routine deceit by both candidates helped make ‘post-truth’ the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year for 2016.” (01/09/26)
https://jimbovard.com/blog/2026/01/09/2016-the-year-american-democracy-became-post-truth/
- Are Free Traders Materialistic — or Are Protectionists?
Source: The Daily Economy
by Donald J Boudreaux“The claim that protectionism serves ‘higher ends’ rests on a confusion about both economics and the non-economic goals people actually value.” (01/09/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/are-free-traders-materialistic-or-protectionists/
- There Will Be More Renee Goods
Source: The Dispatch
by Jeremiah Johnson“On Wednesday, a woman named Renee Good was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis. There are a lot of things you could say about the shooting. … You could point out that it is extremely unclear why ICE officials were stopping her in the first place, or what legal authority they were exercising at that moment. You could point out how unnecessary the entire incident was, how eyewitness accounts emphasize that Good was not acting in a threatening manner …. But what’s most important to say is how utterly predictable Good’s death was. This was not an unforeseeable tragedy or a freak accident. It was the inevitable outcome of an immigration enforcement apparatus that has been poorly trained, sheltered from consequences, and empowered to behave recklessly.” (01/09/26)
https://thedispatch.com/article/renee-good-ice-federal-agents-death-immigration/
- Did the Articles of Confederation Fail? Probably Not
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Larsen Plyler“It is taken, in many cases, to be fact that the reason the Constitutional Convention was called and that the Constitution was ratified was because of the failure of the Articles of Confederation system. The folks at Heritage have made their position clear: ‘The first plan the Framers tried after declaring independence was called the Articles of Confederation. The government that the Articles created failed because it was too weak to coordinate national policy among states with different priorities.’ Now, this is not particularly a criticism of the Constitution, though I believe there is room for that. But, I simply want to raise questions: What if the Articles were not failing? What if they were doing exactly what they were intended to do? What if the Articles were successful, but success was not in the agenda of powerful people?” (01/09/26)
https://mises.org/mises-wire/did-articles-confederation-fail-probably-not
- These Abuses Will Continue Until People Force Them To Stop
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone“All these abuses are going to continue until the people rise up and force them to stop. Western governments are going to get more and more authoritarian. Police forces are going to get more and more militarized and murderous. Freedom of speech is going to be crushed with more and more aggression. Military budgets are going to get more and more bloated. The imperial war machine is going to get more and more belligerent, genocidal and expansionist. The gap between the rich and the poor is going to keep growing and growing. People are going to get more and more miserable and mentally unhealthy. The systems we use to gather information about our world are going to get more and more tightly controlled by the powerful. The extraction of resources and labor from the global south will get more and more abusive and overt.” (01/09/25)
- Assessing Modernity’s Malaise
Source: Law & Liberty
by Alex Hibbs“As anyone living today knows, the Luddites were fighting a losing battle. Though they broke stocking frames, burned factories, and killed mill owners, their efforts to stymie the rise of new cost-reducing machines could not compete with the power of the British state. Their legendary leader, Ned Ludd, inspired disgruntled craftsmen and terrified the authorities like a nineteenth-century Robin Hood. Yet the long processes of enclosure, technological innovation, and global expansion would nonetheless bring mass urbanization, the destruction of local cultures, and the rise of the technologically driven society we inhabit today. In his book Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity, Paul Kingsnorth speaks with the voice of a modern-day Ned Ludd, naming the force that propelled this change: The Machine. What exactly is Kingsnorth’s Machine? It is the culmination of all the ills of modernity.” (01/09/26)
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/assessing-modernitys-malaise/
- Thomas Paine’s Common Sense Must Inspire Us Again
Source: Common Dreams
by Harvey J Kaye & Alan Minsky“Common Sense by Thomas Paine is the most influential work of political literature in American history. Self-published on January 10, 1776, Common Sense instantly became a sensation, spreading like wildfire across the colonies. Within a few weeks, it had sold more copies than any book in the history of the colonies. Paine’s arguments persuaded thousands-upon-thousands of people throughout the 13 colonies to demand more than reform, to support complete independence from England and join the revolutionary cause. Less than six months after Common Sense was first published in Philadelphia, the Declaration of Independence was signed in the same city, establishing a new country defined, in contrast to its European predecessors, by its commitment to equality, liberty and the consent of the governed—just as Paine advocated in Common Sense (and, unlike the founding fathers, Paine did not hesitate to advocate for democracy).” (01/10/25)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/honor-thomas-paine-common-sense
- The Minimum Wage Fallacy
Source: Independent Institute
by Allen Gindler“Recently, I came across a commercial by Mayor Mamdani, who advertises his approach to supporting small businesses. He correctly identifies over-regulation as one of the unnecessary obstacles in opening and conducting small businesses in New York. Then he suggested creating yet another department in the mayor’s office, which would help businesspeople navigate the web of requirements the city demands from businesses. (It looks like a socialist brain is pre-wired to produce this kind of solution: any issue needs its own bureaucratic apparatus.) But he never mentioned the main reason why it is so difficult for new small businesses to survive, besides high rent, that is the minimum wage mandate. On the contrary, among his priorities is to raise the city’s minimum wage. He imagines politicians can decree prosperity by commanding higher pay.” (01/09/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/01/09/minimum-wage-fallacy/
- Bulwark Takes, 01/10/26
Source: The Bulwark
“America Used to Know This Was Wrong.” (01/10/26)
- Unattended Baggage, episode 324
Source: Unattended Baggage
“The NWO is dead, Long Live the NWO.” (01/10/26)
https://unattendedbaggage.substack.com/p/episode-324-the-nwo-is-dead-long
- Reasonably Optimistic, 01/10/26
Source: Washington Post
“No blood for oil? That doesn’t make sense for Venezuela.” (01/10/26)
- Neon Liberalism, episode 59
Source: Liberal Currents
“Venezuela and the State of American Strategy.” (01/10/26)
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/neon-liberalism-59-venezuela-and-the-state-of-american-strategy/
- Underthrow Podcast, 01/10/26
Source: Underthrow
“Rivera and McGrath on Understanding Boyd’s OODA Loop and Organizational Learning (Part Two).” (01/10/26)
https://underthrow.substack.com/p/bonus-surfing-the-whirl-of-reorientation